


In Search Of

by Telenovela



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 21:58:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7124002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telenovela/pseuds/Telenovela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sestina for Shark; home, chest, alone, dream, awake, name.</p><p>(Spoiler-heavy for his entire character arc)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Search Of

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written poetry in a long time, but I've always wanted to try writing a sestina, so here's an exploration of Shark in rigid six-line seven-verse repeating word form.
> 
> I made a friend recently who's a poet and made me want to try again at it - it's a nice feeling.

You have always been in search of home:  
the pendant hanging there above your chest  
or the old house, empty and alone.  
Sometimes it feels like walking through a dream;  
you pinch yourself to see if you’re awake  
and feel it as if someone called your name.

These days they call you by a different name  
than that which you were given in that home.  
You wait for her, but she’s not yet awake,  
the bandaged face, the rise-fall of her chest  
is steady, like she’s just in peaceful dream.  
Beside the bed you wait, and you’re alone

despite the others’ efforts, still alone  
regardless of how much he calls your name  
(the other name, the one you hear in dream).  
You envy him the closeness of his home,  
the shining key, the hope within that chest  
that glows so warm, and constantly awake

beside him, hope itself awake.  
(He cannot be alone.)  
It aches deep in your chest  
to hear affection spoken in that name  
by someone from another world, yet home  
beside him, not just in a dream.

At first you only hear the words in dream  
until you realise that you were awake  
back then, another life, another home  
that still is not, until you wake, alone.  
“I’m just me,” but ‘me’ is not a name.  
Your other self, resounding in your chest,

throws off a family, opens up that chest  
of memories no longer trapped in dream  
but real now, when you were another name,  
another you who is at last awake.  
Surrounded now by others, not alone  
yet somehow still displaced, still not quite home.

Which name will you be called when you awake?  
Your soft warm human chest like an old dream  
remembered; are you still quite so alone? Is this not home?


End file.
